Hello everyone,
Books are still one of the most important sources of information we have as a human species. However, the media on which this information has been stored has changed considerably over time and with it its accessibility and influence on our society.
Nowadays you can find an enormous range of books and texts online. Most of the time, however, access to them is extremely fragmented, difficult to find, subject to a fee, incompatible with the software platform of your choice or, in the worst case, goes under with its provider over time.
To counteract this, annas-archive was founded to make the knowledge stored in the texts and books openly accessible and to preserve it for future generations. On the other hand, there are platforms such as Goodreads that aim to simplify the joy of reading and the exchange of information, as well as the review and discussion of books and texts.
Unfortunately, Goodreads is a centralized, proprietary solution that in addition also happens to be owned by Amazon. BookWyrm is a decentralized, open source alternative in the fediverse that steps in right here.
Now here’s the kicker: what if we combined the power of both platforms? What if we combined the enormous book database of annas-archive with the fediverse, i.e. BookWyrm? Annas archive could benefit from reviews and discussions about the books and BookWyrm could expand its still very limited database many times over.
From my point of view, this would be the perfect combination of two already great projects. What do you think?
TL:DR What do you think about combining annas-archive with the fediverse (BookWyrm)
In theory, if a good number of public libraries and and the Internet Archive each has a paid-for digital copy of a book, and decent infrastructure to ensure redundancy, plus a paper copy as the ultimate backup, then it seems unlikely the book’s content will actually be lost before centuries have passed.
The problem I want solved is this: how do I get my money to the author of a book without needing to use DRM software and without paying tax to gatekeeping corporate monopolists?
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That’s rather simple: P2P payments. I know people here really don’t like cryptos but they fill in this gap really well.
That requires putting one’s faith in the vapor-currency that is crypto. Not saying that it won’t happen one day, but neither is it necessary to solve this problem.
A simple Paypal button, for example, does not require DRM spyware if done from a website on a FOSS stack. The Paypal tax is is mere pennies compared to Amazon. A bank transfer has no tax at all, tho it’s not great in privacy terms.
But where do I get the author’s Paypal ID or bank number from? I want you pay you directly, dammit, but you insist on allowing to Amazon tax the transaction and to force me to install spyware to read your damn book.
This is a cultural problem as well as a technical one, of course.
IMO we need to get to world where enough authors are happy to allow ordinary folks to “pirate” their work, and enough readers are happy to pay them even though they could get away with not doing so. In that world the technical solutions could so easy, so frictionless, in theory. But it takes a leap of imagination for everyone involved.
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What? It doesn’t take crypto to get rid of DRM? What’s needed is the ability for authors to sell their books DRM free, and that does not require and definitely would never scale with crypto.
I suppose you could buy a paper copy of the book and give it to a friend or donate it somewhere.